Du Jiani (middle),Wu Zhitao (right), and Ye Jielong (left) are pictured at the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games on the evening of Feb 4. [Photo/zj.zjol.com.cn]

Team China, which includes hundreds of athletes, entered the Bird's Nest - the National Stadium – as the last national team in the parade at the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games on the evening of Feb 4.

Three athletes on the team, Du Jiani, Wu Zhitao, and Ye Jielong, are from East China's Zhejiang province, where winter sports are much less popular than in the country's northern regions, and not a single Zhejiang-raised athlete had ever attended the Winter Olympics before.

Du, from Jiaxing, is a member of the national women's double bobsleigh team. Wu, from Wenzhou, is a member of the national men's quadruple bobsleigh team. Ye, from Jinhua, is an alternate member of the national men's bobsleigh team.

All three athletes were once track and field athletes before transitioning to bobsleigh.

According to Wang Runiu, dean of track and field department at the Zhejiang College of Sports, nearly 200 Zhejiang athletes have transitioned to winter sports and been successfully enrolled in the national team since Beijing was designated the host city of the 2022 Winter Olympics in 2015.

Wang believes that winter sports in Zhejiang will become more popular following the three athletes' debut at the Winter Olympics.